Archive for the 'Princess and Nikko' Category

So last week was Ebbie’s birthday. She was one years old on the 18th. I totally forgot as I had so many other things going on I’m a bad doggy daddy!

Ebbie turned out to be a tiny Westie. She’s smaller than Princess, who is considered ideal for a Westie. Most Westies I’ve met tend to be a little bigger than Princess. Nikko, the Cairn, is actually a bit bigger than an average Cairn should be. Most Cairns are smaller than Westies!

I’ve been forced to feed Ebbie kibble for now. I’m trying to get weight on her scrawny butt, and kibble has the carbs that do it. I don’t like feeding kibble as it usually is what Princess was allergic too. However she’s shown no signs of any itching or paw biting like Princess did as a puppy, and as you can tell from the photos she also isn’t getting the beard staining. Though I did just bathe her because she was a dirty puppy. She likes to roll in the dirt more than anything else.

So this wasn’t the happiest of holiday seasons. I had just put up the tree, spent HOURS rethreading new lights into The Pink Nightmare’s pre-light madness to get dark sections to work, dragged all the boxes up from the basement when . . . . the houseworkers who went on hiatus returned! They tore out every window to put the new ones in, which meant gaining access outside and inside to the windows, which mean major moving of things including the Christmas tree. I just had it and put the tree away and took everything back downstairs. Things were getting broken left and right, I was not gunna let Christmas get ruined anymore than it had been by them breaking ornaments or the Baby Jesus!

Then they decided to take out the giant kitchen window, tear the walls down (which meant packing up the entire kitchen and moving things elsewhere) and that’s where we are now. Yes they were gone for weeks and decided that two weeks before Christmas was the opportune time to do all this. Hey I had nothing to do! Sure I can just take time out to pack up half the house, forget decorating. No trouble at all, not like you couldn’t have done this all say . . . when it was still warm out!

Anyways, below is some of the progress on the kitchen nook which is being redone . . . Oh a skylight is going in where there is no dry-wall in the one photo.

Putting The New Window In

Tearing Up The Kitchen

Kitchen In Progress

New Kitchen Nook

So there was some issues as to where we would even be for Christmas, but we did manage to drive down to my mom’s Christmas Eve night. My mom had to have a new water heater installed that day, and apparently the workers there did not bother to close her back gate. We arrived at 10pm, it was dark, I didn’t think the gate would be open and couldn’t see it either. So at about 10:30 Christmas Eve . . . Nikko and Ebbie go missing from the backyard! After walking up and down the street calling them, Ebbie came back. She ended up at the back door barking to be let in, or at least responding to our calls. Nikko was another story. We walked for an hour with Princess and Ebbie on leashes, hoping they’d draw him out. Then we drove in the car even further. NOTHING. I was about to just burt into tears. I had given up, he was not going to be found tonight, so we were on our way back home when my mom called. At about midnight, she found him . . . . directly across the street. He knew he did bad and had been hiding out the whole time. The little shit! I was just so relieved to have him back safe and sound at that point. He knew he did bad though, as his ears were down the whole night without me even having to say anything. He also insisted on sleeping with me/us, when normally he and Princess always sleep with my mom. He stayed by my feet the whole night.

Bad Boy!

Cheese! Ebbie

While I was going back and forth between Virginia and NJ before Xmas, John did decorate our tree. We put it back up eventually, and he did it while I was gone. On the 23rd I put out some minimal decorations, pictured below. It’s no where near what I normally do, but with the amount of banging and disruption I didn’t need stuff getting broken. I was already in a foul mood, if they broke the Baby Jesus I would have flipped shit!

The Pink Nightmare

Tinsletown

Vintage Stuff

Rainbow Star

Scury Shit!

Baby Jesus!

We are now in the process of cleaning up the house. This FINALLY includes throwing away crap that needs to be thrown out, the basement and the two rooms on the first floor that will be my study and a new guest room.

So I came down to Virginia for a quick visit as my Aunt and Uncle from Florida were up. My aunt has two Westies as well, Kira and Hammish. It was her and her Westies that got me interested in the breed actually. Her’s are a bit bigger than Princess though. Poor Nikko was the odd man out among all five. It was fun watching them all play with one another in my mom’s yard (video below, Aunt’s Westies have the blue and yellow scarves, Princess has her summer cut).

Poor Ebbie tries to keep up with the big kids, but can’t move as fast. Princess and Nikko have this game where they race out my mom’s back door, down the steps, take a flying leap off the porch and run to the back of the yard to find and chase squirrels up a tree. Ebbie can get up the back steps, but down is another thing. So we have to carry her down, and she gets so upset she’s not with the others that she starts squirming to jump down. I need to get a video of it because it’s so cute!

My Aunt and Uncle have left now, and I’m returning to Jersey soon. I was hoping to meet up with an old friend from High School I haven’t seen in twenty years. We reconnected on Facebook. However she has a sick dog of her own right now, so it’s hard for her to get out of the house. I’ll probably see her in September though at our 20th year reunion . . . I can’t believe it’s been 20 years! Ack! I have yet to officially pay to attend though. I’m waiting to see if a few other friends from that aren’t local to the area decide to go. If they do, I’ll go. If they don’t, well I can meet up with the few who remained in the area another time now that we all reconnected on Facebook. My high school didn’t get it’s act together quick enough, so our reunion is a family friendly day at a local park in Manasssas. Yeah, sounds thrilling!

So the new puppy is finally here! I picked her up last night, and she slept through the night in her crate without a peep or an accident. I’m sure as she grows that will change.

Today she’s been very rambunctious around the house. Princess was initially annoyed by her, but is now used to her. Nikko just seems to avoid her, so she has mainly been entertaining herself or playing with Princess. The cats have hissed at her, but nothing major. So far everyone is adjusting.

As for a name . . . . well I was settled on Luna, but today I was struck by the name Ebbie, because Christmas was on my brain as it was the premier of the Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments today. Ebbie is short for Ebenezer Scrooge, which is my all time favorite Christmas Movie. Yeah I know, it’s also the name of the Susan Lucci version, but fortunately Ebenezer’s little sister calls him Ebbie in several versions of the film

Below are some photos! At some point I’ll need to change the header of my page to “three” little dogs. I’ll get to that at some point. I need to do it in Photoshop though, so I’m not exactly in a rush there.

So only a week left till the new baby comes home! We are so excited, but a name still hasn’t been decided on. I’m hoping when we get her home something will just feel right.

The bunny finally seems to be on the mend. I spent the last two weeks taking him into the vet every other day for fluids via an IV and then pumping him full of green goop. I finally had to get him a new cage cause the old one was toast. I am hoping he will be back to normal by time the new pup gets here this Friday. Otherwise I’ll just be running around ragged dealing with them both.

My garden is doing well. Lots of big bushes with green peppers and tomatoes, now if they’d just turn red. My flower beds have also managed to stay, for the most part, rodent free. One of the chipmunks is digging there, but hasn’t munched on the plants. I may have finally chased off groundhog, as I haven’t seen him in ages. I kept dumping my old coals from my grill down his hole. However we do have a rabbit and what may be a big ole rat that have moved into his hole. I saw something grey with a long tail rush down it today. It could be a small opossum too. Ick! They all need to go.

Finally we have since the 4th finally had 3 nice days of sun and heat. The heat kinda sucks, but so far we have not had any rain. We had almost two weeks of just rain rain and more rain. The ground is so wet that it can’t take anymore water at this point. Our entire driveway is invested with weeds because of it, and I gave up trying to spray them to kill them until the rain stopped. I think our nice weather streak may be ending this week with, you guessed it, more rain!

So we are getting an addition to the family, a new dog. To be precise, a new Westie female. After Nikko I can safely say I will not get anymore boy dogs! We get her July 12th. I had always planned to get a third dog, and actually wanted to get one for the past two years. However issues came up which made me push it back. Some issues were financial, others were John bringing home MewMew kitty last year. I’ve told John at this point 3 kitties have to go to heaven before we get a new kitty! That’s gunna be a long time too, given most of our cats are between 1 and 6 years old. This should hopefully also keep him from springing some new kitten on me!

One of the main reasons I wanted a third pup is for Nikko. Princess is older than Nikko, and she probably will go to doggy heaven first. Though Nikko is a male, only a year younger, so he could go first. However I know if Princess goes first, Nikko will likely die of a broken heart. He’s that attached to her. Either way, I don’t want one dog left alone to die on me of sadness . . . then I’ll have no dogs and be even more sad! I also had planned to get a new pup when mine were around 6 or 7 and still feisty. I didn’t want to add one with older dogs who would just be annoyed with it. So mine are at the age where I feel they won’t be too annoyed with it, but if I wait any longer they might be. Plus this may help keep them young and active (not that they don’t chase cats around enough).

As for names, well I have several picked out. I just have to get to know her and her personality first and that will help me. The names of course have been picked from pop-culture, as were the previous two dogs’ names. I got a few good suggestions from friends, so here is the list so far with their origins . . . If you have an idea feel free to submit it!

Duchess – Because Princess is her older sister.

Jadis – The true name of the White Witch from the Narnia books (love the name, but not sure about naming her after an evil character)

Arilyn – After Arilyn Moonblade from a series of D&D books I loved.

Glinda – An Oz reference, which plays into Nikko (the name of the captain of the witch’s flying monkeys)

Khaleesi – From Game of Thrones and my favorite character . . . until the writer kills her off one day. Therefore I worry that name is jinxed.

I know I say it all the time, but I’m gunna try and make an effort to blog more. Ironically I started this post over a week ago . . . So yeah that says a lot! In part though I’ve been waiting on news about the dog to finish it. Yes Princess was back at the vet again recently. She began peeing during her afternoon naps . . . Not a flood of pee, but she’d be wet in the back, and I found a spot on the sofa where she sleeps too. So back to the doctor she went, especially after all the elevated kidney levels and tests she just went through. So we did more tests, the vet found no signs of infections or stones, which means it could simply be age related and a lack of estrogen. It’s most common for this to happen in spayed older female dogs. So he prescribed her some meds, which she’s on daily now. Of course by time all the tests were done and back, the problem seemed to have stopped . . . She was only peeing in the late afternoon, no other time. It was all very bizarre. Maybe it was psychological? The meds are thankfully cheap enough though. If it starts up again and they fail, we have to move on to other medications or possibly hormone injections.

Here in the Mid-Atlantic/Philadelphia area we are in our first official heat wave of the Summer, though it’s still Spring. Fortunately unlike the previous two years, our air-conditioner hasn’t died . . . yet. I’m not convinced it’s keeping up and will likely conk out at some point. My guess is though that will be the next go around, or when we start getting near the 100 mark. We only got up to 93 this time. Massive thunderstorms on Sunday are supposed to break this heat.

I finally got my gardens started. After a rainy and cold Memorial Day weekend I was able to get the vegetable garden all cleaned out and planted. I thought I’d never get it done! First we had bizarre cold nights, then rain, and now heat waves. Go home Mother Nature, you are drunk! This year I’m growing tomatoes (3 varieties), peppers (2 kinds) and eggplant. I also elevated all my plants this year on cinderblocks. Hopefully this will keep Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Groundhog from nibbling them to death. I also have set up 2 motion detectors with really loud sonic alarms (along with birds of prey sounds and strobe lights). PLUS I sprayed critter ridder down to keep them away . . . . and I’m dumping all my cold charcoal from the grill into Mr. Groundhog’s house. I will beat him!

I also got the flowerbeds outside of backdoor planted this week in between the heat. Well no, I did it in the heat a portion at a time. Fortunately they are in the shade most of the day, but it was still hot as hell out. All that’s left is to clean up the side porch again. Every fall the leaves pile up there along with downed branches from the tree next to our house. This ends up resulting in a nice layer of muck, that at least makes good fertilizer. The ivy I cut back a few years ago is creeping back in and I need to nip it in the bud before it overtakes the whole porch again. There is also a third flower bed there I may finally plant some things in, and we are gunna eventually need a new bird fountain. Mr. Pan has lost a leg and a head . . .

April sucked donkey balls, and I’m glad the month is over! I spent more time at the vet this month than I think I ever have . . . as well as a hell of a lot of money! Where to begin?

Well first up our eldest cat has been wasting away as of recently. At first I thought he was just old, he’s 15 or 16. It’s not unusual for older cats to lose weight. Then however I began to worry something more was wrong, as he had an insatiable appetite. He just sat and meowed for food all day long, and nothing seemed to fill him up. So I took him in, worrying it was cancer. His two brothers (litter-mates) died of it, so I was preparing for the worst. This was the last of the original three cats John had when we met. I knew he would not take it well if something was wrong. It was actually hyperthyroidism, and his levels were extremely toxic. He’s been on medicine for 2-3 weeks and is doing much better now. He still has to have another check-up in a few months to make sure everything is going okay and the meds are still working.

Then there is the dogs . . . . Nikko somehow got exposed to Lymes disease over the past 5-7 weeks, so the vet thinks from his blood work. What the hell! We have not found any ticks on him! I traditionally never frontline the dogs from December-February, but I guess that one warm day we had in February got him! Though frontline doesn’t completely prevent exposure to lymes disease either, so who knows when he got it. It has to be some time in the past year. Ironically I had also JUST got the lymes vacine for them both. Grrrrr! The vet said it will at least prevent further exposure from any other bites. He’s been on antibiotics and is fine. However I have to keep an eye on him for “lameness” which is the usual symptom dogs show. Of course as I type this, the news is running a report that our mild winter is going to mean a horrible summer for ticks. Don’t we already have to deal with those cicadas?

Finally Princess just about gave me a heart attack, which with my blood pressure issues is actually a real possibility. Her urine levels were off at a recent check-up, and then they realized they were off last year too. She had a +2 protein in her urine last year, it rose to +3 this year. Last year she had a bladder infection though, so they attributed it to that. This was the first I heard of this protein issue mind you! Now they needed more tests because it could be a sign of kidney disease, or it could be nothing as the vet said this can happen in older dogs. After the tests I finally heard the news that her levels are higher than normal, but not at the point where we probably need to worry. The vet is going to consult with a second doctor (I hope that isn’t another bill!) and will get back to me, but he thinks we’ll just have to add this test in yearly from here on out to watch it so it doesn’t rise to levels that could start causing kidney damage and then failure. I would rather pay and have this checked every 6 months to be honest if it can pose the risk google claims . . . cause you know when we google symptoms that minor neck pain always leads to an MS diagnosis. Needless to say I’m giving her supplements for old age doggies and probably putting her back on her old “limited ingredients diet” as it makes kidneys work less (among other things). She was on it for skin allergies and I moved her to a new food that she loves and didn’t bother her skin, and also had the added benefit of reducing doggy farts.

So yet another year passed, and I forgot poor Princess’ birthday again! She just turned 8 years young on July 12th. I originally thought it was the 8th, looked it up and found out it was the 12th. Then by the 14th I remembered I had forgotten it! She was of course devastated . . . . okay not really. I need to put this in my iPhone calendar with an alarm set though, along with Nikko, who is in October.

My garden hasn’t been doing so hot this year. I don’t know what’s going on. I guess I had a few good years, now I’m do for a bad one. I put three tomatoes in topsy turvies, two in pots, and one pepper plant in a pot. The one tomato plant in the topsy turvy that I thought wouldn’t amount to much is now doing the best of the three, while the other two seem to be hanging on. I think the heat has been a little too much, and those two get the most sun out of all the plants because of where they are.

Then I had a vermin problem. The groundhogs are back! They devoured half of the best tomato plant that I put in a pot. It has come back, but it probably would have been twice the size it is now. I have since put my halloween zombies out, attached tin foil pans to the tomato ladders to make noise, and have been spraying my plants with various internet remedies to keep the buggers away. So far so good . . . but I just for the first time in a long time saw a groundhog today. Grrrrr!

I have not even touched the two rooms in the house that I said I’d start packing up. Honestly, I’m pretty sure I won’t get to them until the fall at this point. I have a lot of stuff going on. I have taken on a few projects, which are right now only in the planning stages. Nothing huge yet, but come fall it will become some added work for me. Of course it pays nothing right now, the hope is for a future payoff from them and a better job for me in the long run. I’ll discuss all these is a future blog at some point. Hey I gotta keep something to blog about since I have so little to blog about as of late!

I have been keeping up with my diet and fitness regime, and am down about ten pounds! I’ve been doing a lot of classes at my gym in the evenings: Zumba, Step, Boot Camp and Body Blast. This has become all the more important as of late, as it turns out I have high blood pressure. I probably have for years now honestly, but it’s just slowly gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. I think this probably explains why I’ve felt so run down and blah for awhile now, as well as the increase in my headaches. I just thought it was the result of stress and the long commutes to and from work. I am now on medication, and it’s wait and see if it works. I am actually waiting for my doctor to return my call as I write this, as I was supposed to check in with her as to how it’s going. So far it’s down slightly, but it’s still high. Boo! Then I have another appointment at the end of the month to review everything and decide whether to try something else or change dosages. Fun fun! John is also being the food police. Actually no he’s just being a brat, telling me how all I’ll be able to eat on the cruises from now on are the bland spa selected meals on the menu.